Hitori Nojima: Death Stranding: The Official Novelization, Volume Two

A BT.

Sam reflexively held his breath and stopped moving. Perhaps this was why he hadn’t sensed any sign of human life in the lab. Maybe something had happened to turn this place into BT territory. But there was no response from the Odradek. Deadman had assured Sam that the functionality of the reset BB had been restored, but maybe Sam had messed up when he was tuning the BB with himself. What if it was still too soon after the BB’s memories had been wiped? On the way here from Mountain Knot City they hadn’t had to go through any BT territory, so Sam hadn’t noticed that the BB wasn’t responsive. But now he realized that he hadn’t been able to reconnect with Lou at all.

Deadman’s face flashed before Sam’s eyes. He could feel the anger billowing up as he imagined punching the liar square in the jaw.

Then, Lou let out a laugh.

As Sam peered down into the pod, Lou gazed back up. Lou seemed to be trying to tell him something. Sam looked back toward the BT. He could have kicked himself. It was a dummy.

Sam flicked it with his finger and carried on forward, led by the unending music.

Someone was lying face up on a padded lounge chair ahead in the darkness. The sleeping face beneath the glasses was that of Heartman, who Sam had talked to over codec a few times now.

“Heartman?” Sam whispered.

The man didn’t look like he was sleeping. His chest wasn’t rising or falling at all. He wasn’t breathing. Sam had a bad feeling about this. This was why there had been no sign of life.

He supposed the piece of equipment beside the chair was there to monitor Heartman’s vitals. It was similar to one of the machines in Bridget’s room. It was most likely an EKG. The EKG reading should have depicted a wave, but it wasn’t oscillating a jot. It was flatlining. Heartman’s heart had stopped.

“Heartman?”

The music stopped. It felt like someone’s funeral had just come to an end. Lou was staring at Heartman with a strange expression. The Odradek was still unresponsive. Then, a small device on the left side of Heartman’s chest let out an electronic noise.

Immediately afterward, the body shook. With an electronic beep, the EKG graph began to draw waves. Then the man drew a deep breath and sat up, and looked at Sam with the face of someone who was still slightly groggy, with tears in his eyes.

Sam still hadn’t grasped what was going on when Heartman stood up and wiped the tears away. He adjusted his glasses then offered his hand to Sam. Seemingly unperturbed by an unresponsive Sam, the man began to speak.

“Well, you certainly caught me with my pants down. Glad you could make it, Sam. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. But I am what I am.”

Sam just stood there, not knowing what Heartman was talking about or how he should reply.

“Ah. Please lay her down there,” Heartman instructed. He seemed to think that the reason Sam was so confused was because he didn’t know what to do with Mama, and indicated toward a stretcher next to his lounge chair.

“Still no sign of them,” Heartman muttered to himself, not paying Sam any mind as Sam laid the body bag down. Heartman was skillfully fiddling with his cuff link.

“You know your heart stops beating?” Sam said in an attempt to get Heartman to turn around.

“Don’t worry about it,” Heartman replied, pointing at the device on his chest. “It stops every twenty-one minutes. I spend three minutes on the Beach, and then return.” His voice was as casual as if he was describing his day.

“Sixty deaths and sixty resurrections per day. Sixty opportunities to search the Beach for my departed family. This is how I live. This is my life,” he explained.

Sam was becoming increasingly confused, but Heartman was paying no attention and continued to fiddle with his device. On a small table beside the chair stood a small hourglass, but for some reason, no sand was falling from the top compartment. Old books, images, and music neatly lined the ceiling-high bookshelves. Between the books and other objects stood a picture of a woman with a wide, innocent smile and a shy little girl. The ceiling was almost hidden from view by the hanging skeletal samples of whales and other creatures.

Somehow, the room appeared the way Sam had always pictured a room belonging to Heartman would appear. The look of the man himself, still fiddling with his device, fit Sam’s image to a tee, too.

The windows displayed on the monitor that monopolized one entire wall were closed one by one, until the monitor itself faded out. Then a large picture window appeared. The entire wall was a window. Heartman beckoned Sam, who was squinting in the bright light.

Outside the window, Sam could see the heart-shaped lake.

“That’s my heart right there,” Heartman said, pointing outside. “That crater was made by a voidout. I see myself in that crater. My wife and my child.”

Sam was even more confused. Was that supposed to be some kind of metaphor?

“It’s like looking at the shape of my heart,” Heartman continued as the AED in Heartman’s chest projected a hologram into the air. A 3D image of an animated heart was pulsating rhythmically. “The doctors called it myocardial cordiformia. Mine is an especially unusual case. It doesn’t run in the family.”

Heartman gestured toward the sofa and encouraged Sam to sit down. Heartman sat back down in his lounge chair.

“You know, I never came to terms with their loss. In the days that followed, I became obsessed with an idea: that the Beach is real, and they are on it. Some of my colleagues ridiculed me for it, they said that it was just a theory or the dogma of some groups who shared a particular paradigm, but I knew it was real. I would induce cardiac arrest—three minutes at a time—and search for them. Day after day after day…”

That meant that the two people in the photo on Heartman’s bookshelf were his wife and child. Here was a man who Sam could somewhat relate to.

“All so you could say goodbye?” Sam asked.

“Quite the opposite. It is said that everyone’s Beach is different. So what if everyone’s afterlife is different, too? I find the thought terrifying. Spending eternity alone. Which is why I decided to find my family and make sure to move on with them.”

“You mean die with them?”

Heartman smiled at Sam’s question and raised his thumb.

“If death would see us reunited, then yes. But the repeated cardiac arrests took their toll on my heart. The muscle gradually deformed. And after a while they started calling me ‘The Beach Scientist—Heartman.’” Heartman got up from his chair and held out his hand. “So, I’m Heartman. Nice to meet you.”

Sam’s expression remained blank as Heartman approached the stretcher. Mama’s face slowly appeared as he pulled down the zipper. There was no paleness to her face, nor any hint of postmortem lividity or rigor mortis. It looked like she was sleeping peacefully.

Heartman let out a curious sigh.

“A body that doesn’t necrotize. No sign of decomposition. It’s as if she were still alive,” Heartman commented.

Sam recognized that look. It was the same look that Deadman had given him when they had first met. The look of a scientist filled with pure curiosity.

“She’s the perfect mummy. An impeccable corpse,” Heartman continued, fiddling with the body. Behind his curiosity there didn’t lie some great moral motivation to help mankind, but the innocent urge of child to disassemble a toy to see how it worked. Sam had to say something. He didn’t like the way Heartman was tinkering with Mama’s body so brazenly. It wasn’t about respect for the dead, he just didn’t want to see Mama’s body violated like that when Mama’s ka still lived on inside Lockne. Luckily, Heartman seemed to sense Sam’s disapproval and looked up.